Sonja Alexander
Headquarters, Washington May 3, 2002
(Phone: 202/358-1761)
Lanee Cooksey
Stennis Space Center, Miss.
(Phone: 228/688-1957)
Keith Koehler
Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.
(Phone: 757/824-1579)
RELEASE: 02-81
NASA HONORS STUDENT WINNERS
Is there usable water on Mars? How does the space
environment affect earthworms? What is the effect of El Nino
on whale shark migration? What does a rocket flight sound
like?
Students nationwide tackled these and many other questions
as part of the NASA Student Involvement Program, or NSIP,
competition. NSIP is a national education program for grades
K through 12 that links students directly with NASA's
diverse missions of research, exploration and discovery.
Through this program, student experiments were selected in
January 2002 to fly on either a NASA suborbital sounding
rocket in June or a future Space Shuttle mission.
NASA's Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi will host
the NSIP National Symposium for high school winners and
their teachers May 5-8, 2002. The students will present
their winning projects from one of the following competition
areas: Design a Mission to Mars; Watching Earth Change; and
Science and Technology Journalism. Students and NASA
scientists and engineers will discuss issues raised by each
winning team.
During June, space flight student winners and their teachers
will spend a week at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's
Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. During their
visit the students will work with Wallops personnel to make
final experiment preparations and get a first-hand look at
the facility operations.
In addition, those participating in the rocket project at
Wallops will witness the launch of their experiments,
analyze the data and present their findings to other
students and NASA engineers and scientists.
Every student who enters the NSIP competition with a
qualified entry will receive a certification of
participation. First place winners from each judging center
in grades K-8 will win a presentation at their school by a
NASA representative.
The following Web site provides additional information about
the NSIP competition:
http://education.nasa.gov/nsip
The Offices of Human Resources and Education, Space Flight,
Earth Science and Space Science at NASA Headquarters,
Washington, support the NSIP Competition.
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